


Lost and found

by DeVereWinterton



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 19:44:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14479839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeVereWinterton/pseuds/DeVereWinterton
Summary: 'The need to confess had become a necessity, a despair. She had longed for him to know, for quite some time now, and she’d longed for him when she’d gone away.'Those three little words hold so much power. Fair warning: this is NOT a happy fic.





	Lost and found

**Author's Note:**

> I visited London last week, all by me onesie, and it was lovely to be back on British soil. I was inspired by the pride taken in cultural heritage, and it motivated me to do an even better job – literally – when returning back home. Unfortunately, the after-flight-virus hit me square on the nose, and now I’m stuck at home. Fortunately, I write when ill. The foundations for this have been laying around for quite some time, and it’s a SAD one. I’m sorry?

 

 

_‘It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.’_

― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View (1908)

 

She’d done it. Finally. She’d achieved the one thing that had terrified her for most of her life. One of the things that would not come easy to her, no matter how hard she’d tried. Then again, nothing that mattered had ever been easy.

The short sentence uttered had sounded almost foreign to her own ears, like a language she had not yet mastered, the parts of the words tasting strangely exotic on her tongue. She supposed it was an acquired taste, one that should have become familiar over time.

However, exotic had quickly turned into bitter, as bile had begun to rise in her throat.

She’d told him she loved him.

The following silence had been deafening.

 

The need to confess had become a necessity, a despair. She had longed for him to know, for quite some time now, and she’d longed for him when she’d gone away.

She’d wondered about another taste of his lips, the quirk of his mouth, the feel of his fevered skin pressed intimately against hers.

She had told him as much in her letter, aching for his reply, but she had never even gotten round to posting it.

She’d rushed back to Melbourne the very next day after Mac had contacted her via lengthy telegram about the failed police raid, late at night. The properly conveyed message was still a blur, but the keywords were imprinted in her mind, her worried thoughts almost as tangible as braille.

 _Police raid. Ambush. Bullets flying. Jack. Hospitalised_.

The news had hit her like a blow to the head, the gut, the heart. Whilst travelling from Bombay to Melbourne (having flown to India from London to win time) aboard the SS Strathnaver, _coming after him_ , she’d felt like drowning – the strong undercurrent of emotions threatening to pull her under and into the deep abyss, the overwhelming darkness about to carry with it her hopes and dreams.

The journey home had taken close to thirty days, during which she had come to the realisation that time was anything _but_ a relative concept. She’d been a frazzled wreck by the time the ship had docked in Melbourne.

She had to see him, smell him, touch him, hold him.

Tell him.

Immediately upon her arrival down under, all of those hopes had turned to ashes, and her dreams to dust.

A fleeting and fragile substance – yet paradoxically a symbol of eternity achieved – like her whispered words of love, floating on the ever-changing wind.

The solemn, grim expressions that had met her at the docks had told her everything she did not want to know.

_Better three hours too soon, than a minute too late._

She’d cracked.

 

Softly stroking the bars as she closes the gate permitting entry to the empty cemetery behind her, struggling – or maybe simply unwilling – to let go, as restrained sobs cause her body to tremble, wreaking havoc on her hollowed body, her distraught mind, her torn-out heart.

“Jack…”

A raspy plea, a fervent wish, a desperate desire for him to come back to her.

The swallow-brooch attached to her black ensemble shimmers dully in the Australian sun, as if the dust is settling all around her, incapacitating her, smothering her with grief, never to fly again.

She is quickly losing her composure, her grip, and her sanity as she sinks down onto her knees, clutching the cold metal between her glove-clad fingers.

The unsent letter wrinkles between the folds of her heavy coat. This is not a time for light, flowing fabrics, even though the heat is scorching her.

She deserves to feel heavy, and weary, and tormented, for she has left him behind, and is leaving him behind still, forevermore.

There are no more tears left, for she has shed them all. Dry-heaves are all that come, her body’s attempt to rid itself of the stifling panic, the distorted desperation that has overtaken her, the prospect of a life without him all of a sudden too much to bear.

_Unbearable._

She needs him now, more than ever before, to help her deal with this indescribable loss. Needs him to look into her eyes with kind understanding and an unparalleled love, to draw her close (but never too close), to hold her in his strong embrace, to tell her in that deep timbre – _Phryne_ – that it will all be alright in the end.

 

But it is not to be.

It will never be alright.

He is lost – she has lost him – and she finds she never wants to be found, ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> Please don’t kill me for this (yes, I can see the irony in that).  
> Side notes: the SS Strathnaver commenced service in 1931, but for the sake of the story, let’s pretend she was around a bit earlier than that. The line about the three hours comes from Shakespeare’s _The Merry Wives of Windsor_.
> 
> Also, encouraged by the lovely [MissingMissFisher ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bokchoynomad/pseuds/MissingMissFisher), I’m on Tumblr now, so come find me [here ](https://deverewinterton.tumblr.com) (as I have no idea how to find all of you).


End file.
